Sunday, March 28, 2010

Weekly Summary: March 22-28

(Sunrise from Green this morning: summit #94.)

03-22-2010Mon-AM: 35 miles (4:42) Gold Hill+Green Mt., 6000'Ran 1:23:50 for the 10 miles from 4th St to Gold Hill (3000' climb), came back down in 66 minutes. Bonked pretty badly on Green, but wouldn't have been so bad if the trails weren't so messy.

03-23-2010Tue-AM: 15 miles (2:13) Green Mt., Ranger-Greenman, 2800'Tired, so took it nice and easy. Nice running in the clouds.PM: 8+ miles (1:07) Skunk Creek-Kitt FieldRaining the entire way. Did the last 3 miles barefoot at Kitt, but should've done more of the run there because my feet never got cold like I thought they would.

03-24-2010Wed-AM: 16 miles (2:53) Green Mt., up Crown Rock to Flag Rd to West Ridge; down Ranger and Gregory, 3000'That's right, almost 11 minutes/mile. Breaking trail when Iwasn't on the road. Constant knee-deep snow and then the switchbacks on upper Ranger were covered in chest-high drifts that I was forced to wallow/wade/swim through. Fortunately, I was wearing tights. Took me 44min to go down the three miles of Ranger-Gregory.PM: 8 miles (1:05) Goose Creek LoopNice jog around town in the evening after an afternoon in the library.

03-25-2010Thu-AM: 15 miles (2:20) Green Mt., up Gregory to Flag Rd to West Ridge; down Greenman-Saddle-Amp, 3000'Bloody shins postholing through ice-crust on the West Ridge this morning. Trails are a huge mess; nobody gets out to pack it down during the week!

03-26-2010Fri-AM: 25 miles (4:18) 3 x Green Mt., up Gregory down front, 8000'42:45, 42:25, 42:15 in really lame snow conditions on the Ranger trail. Ran with Jeff before the weather turned to crap again. Legs felt surprisingly solid all day despite the snow. Need to do four laps soon.

03-27-2010Sat-AM: 16 miles (2:29) Green Mt., Ranger-Greenman, 2800'There were 2-3" of fresh snow on the top half of the mountain, but trail was still in better shape than yesterday. Got a couple bonus miles at the end running some errands around town.PM: 8 miles (1:02) Skunk Creek+Kitt FieldAfter loosening up I felt good and cruised 5mi barefoot.

03-28-2010Sun-AM: 15 miles (2:17) Green Mt., Ranger-Greenman, 2800'5am wake-up gave me a nice sunrise from the summit. Trail was very well-packed but really narrow--rarely wider than 12". Finished up with 2 miles of barefoot at Kitt Field.AM2: 7 miles (1:05) Red Rocks Canyon in COS, 1000'Quick trip to the Springs gave me the opportunity to cruise around one of my old stomping grounds at 11am. Absolutely incredible trails there--especially awesome in the spring sun.

Obviously, this was a solid week. I'm starting to feel pretty good, health-wise and fitness-wise. Both long runs had no deleterious effects on my knee, which was further supported by the good news that my MRI showed no structural issues in my knee. I had hoped to get some kind of speedy-ish workout in on Wednesday morning, but Tuesday night's foot of snow foiled those plans. No worries, the weather looks incredible this coming week and I should be able to fit something in.

Most importantly, on all of my runs--even my afternoon/evening easy runs--I've started to get that very efficient, natural default feeling that typically occurs when I'm reaching a decent level of fitness. In addition, I've been getting in a significant amount of barefoot running, which is always helpful in maintaining efficient form. I expect the overall mileage to drop slightly in the next couple of weeks because of all the academic responsibilities I'll have here in the last month of the semester. That's definitely not a bad thing, though.

A couple pictures of the trail conditions at ~6am this morning on Green Mountain:

(Not a bad morning on top.)

(Upper Greenman: usually a series of log steps here. In reality, this section is stupid steep.)

(Very narrow trail a bit lower down on Greenman.)

And then, later in the morning:

(The unmistakable visage of Pikes: Oh, how I miss her.)

(Jocelyn loves running in Red Rocks.)

(With college teammate Meg Z.)

Finally, I would normally be disparaging of the fact that The Kills use a drum machine instead of an actual human percussionist, but Alison Mosshart more than makes up for it by being such a smoking babe:

11 comments:

"decent level of fitness";-)Had some arm chair ultrarunning fun yesterday musing about western states this year if you run it. Geoff, Hal, you, many others... I think one comment was "they will run each other into bloody stumps or someone will absolutely kill it."

Hello, I have next weekend to cross from Moab to Denver and would like to see and run as much of CO as I can fit in. What would you suggest this time of year, ( not too snowy, ) for someone coming from sea level? Thanks, Travis

Brandon,More like a change in mission: to not flunk out of school. Also, Miwok.

Travis,Coming from Moab, to get some excellent snow-free Colorado trail running I would stop off just west of Fruita at the Kokipelli/McInnis Canyon trailhead off of I-70. The Colorado River Canyon is tough to beat for scenery.

Tony - fantastic week going by what you have described. When is your next biggie race? And have you thought about running in other parts of the world, Asia for instance? (I am based in Singapore and there is an annual North Face 100km endurance run - this year's is on 9th October).

Hi Tony,great and busy week. Great motivation for me. I run trails 5 times a week, that´s nothing to compare with you. :-) Would you mind to post your daily routine, I mean when does your runnig drag you out of bed...and so on. Thanks a lot...J

The ideal in the Lieh-Tzu is a state, not of withdrawal, but of heightened perceptiveness and responsiveness in an undifferentiated world. My mind concentrated and my body relaxed, bones and flesh fused completely, I drifted with the wind East or West, like a leaf from a tree or a dry husk, and never knew whether it was the wind that rode me or I that rode the wind. -The Book of Lieh-Tzu